


Kept the Hives

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bees, Daughters, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Love, Memoirs, Names, Orphans, Parenthood, Retirement, Retirementlock, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sussex, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:08:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 7,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They did name her Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Namesake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [professorfangirl (lizeckhart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/gifts).
  * Translation into فارسی available: [Kept the Hives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184110) by [DivineBlade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineBlade/pseuds/DivineBlade)



~

My namesake is not my father. Or he is, in a way. I can see him there, back to the boughs, a bow stuck haphazard in the umbrella stand the way it was in the later years. Smoke curling up the limbs, scythes slung rib-like in the apple trees.

I saw it for what it was, and they did too, after a time. A long time when my da-- well he and mum loved each other, but don't think they didn't love the edge more, all tape and blades and the shooting range. When I was five I scooped a shell from under the sofa, secreted it. They kept me at Baker Street in the afternoons, if it was quiet there; when the ocular made my eye ache, he lifted me down.  
  
When I was twelve my mother pulled me from a bombed bus, didn't come out herself. I understood a great deal after that, from the slope of their combined shoulders.

I got words from dad, silence from mum, aim from them both, and madness from--

"You're going to be a sharpshooter, aren't you then?"

It's the first thing he must have said to me; an early memory I don't even know is.  
  
Might as well say: dad loved him like fire, his best man, though it took a bullet, several, to make him say.

They moved in after the wars--for them anyway, with the streets cleaner and their hair silvering like scalpels and ash. There was a lot to make up for. I understand now. I do in the way only an orphan at last--

What do to with this cottage, in a time full of bees.

They've left themselves here, all of them but him most of all, in bitters and burns and inkspills and honey. I'm in the kitchen now, drinking his smoky tea, watching easterlies worry the targets in the garden, waiting, writing _stay._

 

~ _ **Meredith Sherlock Morstan Watson.**_

Beloved.


	2. Metal

~

I hid the shell casing, in my room under a square of white felt in a box meant for jewellry; carried it to Baker Street one afternoon in the pocket of my favourite hoodie, black, and showed it to him.

“Your dad give you that, or your mum?” is what he asked me, I remember.

I told him neither and he bent, looking at my hands in the London light, sharp and clear as a slide-edge.

“Ah, found it then. Clever girl.”

I was still for my age, small and straight and serious, hair not yet short, fringe; ought to have been wheaty but was dark; still is.

He smelled like the things that weren’t safe to taste and the flat was gold-lit and his eyes crinkled.

“Well. We could etch that, if you like. With acid. Ferric chloride.”

We did my initials and the chemical symbol for magnesium,which he called me sometimes.

I don’t think I tarnished so easily exposed to air, but I never said that to him. Easy to keep what he gave, even the black moods, certainly ones that shone.

I didn't show dad until much later, years probably, a moment when we were close, at home, when they’d closed a good murder and the high was coming down domestic at our kitchen table, his elbows resting on blue linen next to the discarded _Guardian_ and mum’s old letter-opener, brassy and keen. If he started I don’t remember. His smile,again and again like crackle glass over his worn face; I have it still.

*****

City, life to return to. Am I done shooting things.

I don’t know; don’t know. He’s been gone only a little time.

I can see him there in the apples, younger this time, leaning on the wall, cheeks flushed with cold and a frost-crisp nest in his bare hands.

_Meredith!_

_Sherlock._

Four years after mum died I saw him for the first time, he and dad. Of course it wasn't the first; when were they not in some way together, but in the garden one tea-hour over the holidays, just for a moment I saw underneath, in their wrists or lashes as the light came over the wall and their heads turned together and their fingers brushed bruised in the branches.

They solved six cases and set to celebrating.

I smoked in secret, started to sprout.

The neglected _persicaria_ came up that year, in spring so bright, still loved.

 

 **_~MSMW  Mg_** ⊛

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [persicaria, knotweed, smartweed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persicaria%22)   
>  [brass shell etching](http://kcpmcguild.blogspot.com/2013/02/brass-shell-casing-etching-tutorial.html)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you to [PFG](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/works), [greenjudy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greenjudy/pseuds/greenjudy), and  
> [Jude](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas).


	3. Madness

~

He lost his mind, once.

No, more than once. And it wasn’t really his mind, just equilibrium, just balance, just what kept him, what kept the spectacles on dad’s nose, kept him from upsetting everything in the flat, kept mum’s hand steady on the trigger. I’d seen all that, when I was old enough.

“You, Meredith, will be a mycologist.” I can see him there, muttering a flourish from the cushions, one hand already on the gate of another place, this place maybe. That dressing gown was the _colour_ of a mushroom, the mould around him nearly visible, the air heavy with neglect.

Hushed rush of Baker outside the curtains. I think it was fall.

“Get up,” dad said, called over, wrapped fingers round his wrist. “Jesus Christ.”

“Mer, fetch a glass,” is what he said. The kitchen reeked of acid and earth.

I ran the taps to their particular murmurs, a code, shorthand; dad’s hand in his wet hair.

They didn’t secret some things.

“Shoot straight,” mum said, “wait for it to be right. Then go.”

That’s what I’ve done. That’s what I’ve always—

“Put your eye here,” he told me once. “Look all the way through.” I can see him, squinting at the ocular, crinkling at the targets in the garden, grinning in an old photo of dad’s, them with London sky and crime scene broken loose in puddles around their twined shoes.

“That the best you can do,” I can hear him say. “Look here. Observe.”

Suddenly delicate cell walls, phloem, the hives buzzing alarm at midsummer, a drowse in the garden; Mum’s hair standing up, buttercup gone dandelion with static, his hand smoothing it down, her distracted laugh.

Dad pulled him up then, a root from the dark, leant him on his bad shoulder while I stood by still seventeen.

“You’re never doing this to yourself again, Sherlock. You understand?”

His head dropped on dad’s shoulder.

“You’re going to be a chemist,” is what he said to me, “and … like your dad. Blogger. Brilliant.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I put the glass in his hand, watch dad tip it up, let him drink.

 

_**MSMW~** _


	4. Ash

~

“Stop smoking,” he said, “or you’ll end up like me.” (I did, though it took awhile. Both.)

He deduced my first boyfriend’s infidelity, my best friend’s shoplifting habit, how long I’d been at the library and what sort of sweets I stopped for. (“Black Jacks, got any more?”)

He showed me where he’d shot the wall. (“Don’t tell your dad.”) They kept the weapons away, much as they could, when I was younger, if I was younger. ( _You’re going to be a sharpshooter, aren’t you?)_ Arm always steady,eye;how could they not be.

“Your dad saved my life,” he said to me, later, and he didn’t mean—so many things I didn’t know until twenty, until thirty. He meant the sun to the plant, the sky to the star, the things unvoiceable except in broad and bow-stroke. He meant _this_. I never saw him look at anyone the way he looked at--

“His first love,” is what Mrs. Hudson whispered, biscuits at the table and girlish breath, “John. Your dad. And his last.” I didn’t know what it meant but she served what was needed when it was needed, I knew that; crisp demerara sugar, ginger, honey, Lady Grey. ( _Em Gee_ she called me, for Sherlock’s nickname. “You look like him,” she said once, “dramatic, not your mum’s sweet bones there, in your face…or your dad’s.”)

It wasn’t that she thought any of them were sugar all through. Or she did.

They were sixty before they carried 221B here for good, let the dust keep the place—

“Yours some day,” dad said. “This too.”

He held mum carefully, memory like a blade; Mrs. Hudson close, heedless. Their ashes were in the garden, are in the garden; I can see them there peering over shoulders; one sharp, one soft—no, both sharp, green, spikes of firethorn and juniper.

They’d stored up their sorrows and joys, kept what they couldn’t say.

Sherlock laughed in the kitchen, wept in the apiary.

He smoked in the garden.

“Quit,” I’d tell him, nick a match, “again.”

 

**_~MG_ **

 


	5. Silence

 ~

I had ash in my hair.

When I got older I thought—

They didn’t talk about it but I knew, about her name, her secret sign, tiny, a leaf and a letter.

She had reasons, years, clinic and range and flat and street. Baker Street, side-eyed experiments, wary steps, a hand to crime scene pinned. “Sherlock.” A particular tone, affectionate, my hand in hers.

Grins crossed with dad’s, hands clutched, shouts volleyed, codes cracked.

She had them. (“Not entirely,” is what she said to herself.)

I was twelve. It was summer. Here at the weekend.

She pulled me from a bombed bus, didn’t come out herself.

I had ash in my hair and the street shimmered and I ran.

It wasn’t something he could have stopped, though he said otherwise. It wasn’t something--

“Every rat in London _, every one_ , and I didn’t see…”, is what he was saying, is what he said.

The Met flashing. Dad’s arms, knees. Sherlock cursing.  Mycroft, not so imperious. Dark cars.

She pulled me from a bombed bus, didn’t come out herself.

There were shouts, burns; I was almost untouched.

Six dead. I didn’t see.

There was beautiful Sally Donovan, anger-cracked, streaked in the smoke.

Sherlock holding dad steady.

I can see him there in the garden, creased, railing at targets, arms askew in the bloody boughs--

Dad shouted, attended, stayed.

Dad put his face in his sleeve.

Sherlock carried me to the cab, carried us to Baker, set me clothed in the tub.

I had ash in my hair.

He washed it out.

 

**~MSMW**


	6. Words

_~  
_

_Bloody,_ dad wrote _, tired from doctoring, running, tapping the keys. He’s got to wake up._

He did, and I remembered when I gave dad trouble, his mouth went straight. Sherlock’s curled. His shoulders went straight, then slumped.

“You,” dad shouted at me once, home late, “are no angel.”

“Nor I,” Sherlock said, “nor I.”

*****

I can see them here at the gate, arms brushing, hounds to the scent, war wafting city to Sussex, blood bristling their necks the way it might. 

Dad was at Baker Street. (There’d been another bullet, before, the one they didn’t talk about.) This time I was born; I was just at uni; I took a train.

Bart’s intensive care alive all night, insect, pulse, chemical, machine.

“Mer, come here,” dad said, caught me.

He squeezed Sherlock’s limp hand.

“Stupid bastard,” dad said, “too old for this.”

“I love you,” is what he said.

To me: “I love him.”

I know. I knew.

I took his other hand.

*****

Sherlock woke sore, feverish, squeezed back. Something slipped, shifted between.

I went for tea.

I can see them now perched on the gate.

“Never been easy,” is what dad said.  He’s there at Sherlock’s shoulder, cold cloud, high blood, stiff easterly. Storm. Liftoff. I know what he saw there, black as a field crow’s.

**~MG**


	7. Coat

  
**~**

“Murder,” he’d say. Hands rubbed before crime-wall, palms sighing like silk and apple skins, friction; a spark, I remember, in each eye, particular as agate.

He liked pushpins. Cuffs and lockpicks. Not guns, so much.

“Sherlock!”

Dad pecked the keys, fingers angry at the barely-avoided, puddles stepped in, laws broken, titles rejected; the risks dared, tempted, cajoled, seduced, shammed-for, piled up and slipped over shoulder, flung around neck. Flipped up collar. Pulled on and blown behind in a stiff wind. That coat. There was, is, more than one, threadbare to near-new, sheeny, grey, deep as twilight, hung lovingly, worn, likely stroked. Not by him.

Everything he was.

I asked him if it was magic, once. Wands and fairy blades and armour.

“Yes,” he said, laughed in the way he only did—

“Yes.”

I could hear dad smiling.

*****

“You’re Sherlock’s daughter.” I never said otherwise, if someone was mistaken. Neither did he.

He showed me London. The one he saw. I can see it now, spires over fireweed, bridges at dusk, the secret places you’d never find him. He bolted, sunk under the old red earth, the chalk, unearthed himself, shook it off, leapt, ascended, stood on a roof and took the city’s pulse. Tumbled at sunset. Came back up.

Climbed the steps and sulked and sketched and set things afire. Mapped, balanced, shattered, skewered and spilled and stepped up out of the wreckage. (Foot down, smack, center of the table, up, other foot, smack, stuck to coffee’d papers.)

I can see him there vexed, fingers scrubbed to scalp, feathers shaken out.

Dad must have caught, pocketed, kept them close as cape and cloak.

I never saw him look at anyone like that, not quite like that.

*****

His suits are too long. Wrapped myself in dad’s vest, a grey jumper, a little hat of mum’s. And later Sherlock’s jacket. The velvet one, blue, the color of the night sky. Winter night over the Marylebone Road, picked silver with light-island stars.

He had whole galaxies, neighborhoods.

He had maps in his head that never stopped, never ended, not where monsters were, are, where they shucked the city and slipped, fell off the shoulders of the country, into the wood and the field and the sea.

**_~MS_ **

 


	8. Dad

~

There were a lot of stories that ended, train at a ghost station, with _I forgave him._

“I forgave him,” is what dad said, “of course.”

His tricks made dad go starry, then cross-eyed, made mum slam doors, made her push them out, leave her to her mysteries, them to theirs, sometimes made her run--

He planned their wedding, pretended he was going to ruin it, made everyone weep with joy. “I hugged him,” dad said; “held him right there in front of god and everybody. You were there too.”

_I forgave him. I love him. I always will._

What to do with this place, the ash in the garden.

*****

Dad left first, not by much. It was quiet.

“You have no idea,” Sherlock said by the bed, “you have no idea how I….”

I called him dad too, not for the first time, put my arms around so we could shake together, head bowed into his hard ribs; said oh I think I do.

“Of course you do. Of course of course…”

I’d seen him cry only once before.

“John,” is all he could say.

His hair was still dark.

He stayed here with his stories.

He stayed here with his bees.


	9. Palace

~

Alarm. Dream-buzzing in the mind-cottage.

_Green sofa with brown duvet:_

“He woke me at 4 am once,” dad says, “to help him analyse twenty specimens of vomit.”

“Vomited himself all the next day.”

“Ran a fever so high he forgot his name, his first anyway.”

“Yeah, I held his damn hair.”

“Called him a cock too, more than once.”

“But he solved the vomit case.”

“Put a poisoner away.”

_Kitchen table, scars, faint elbow-marks:_

“Made nematode soup once; I almost drank it.”

“Set a cerebellum on fire. Not his.”

“Broke into a military base, a Tube station, lots of vaults, more high-security buildings than I can count…”

“Got us arrested. “

“Got us arrested again.”

“Got us killed, nearly.”

“Killed.”

*****

They were happy. They were happy.

Dad laughed when he was angry, smiled when he was sad, did both of those things when he was neither. Sat in the garden and spoke in war--helicopters, minefields, fire, injury, violent death. Blinked, smiling. He’s talking about their London. I’m old enough to know.

*****

_Study with its chestnut shelves:_

 “The blog’s terrible,” dad says, “the books are better but he’s never stopped calling me a romantic.”

“He’s the romantic, yeah?”

“Let’s see him write something other than hydrocarbons and honeybees. “

“And the ash content of the soils of …”

“And what that’s got to do with murder.”

“Forgot somehow, to say he was-is-a bastard.”

“And a good man, but I think I said that.”

“Made me forget a Wednesday once, a Thursday too, whole weeks sometimes but that was all right.”

“Mostly he didn’t forget a thing he didn’t mean to but Greg’s name, though I think that was a game. He still won’t say.”

“Called him Greg the day he married Molly. And since.”

“You remember? No, you were too young.”

(I remember.)

*****

_Bed brought from Baker Street, faded elements above:_

“This place has a secret name, Meredith.”

“Don’t tell your dad.”

_Never delete it._

“I’ll tell him later.”

Buzzing in garden, his hands nested in the hives.

I remember.

_**~MSMW** _


	10. Friends

~

It can’t have been easy but I don’t remember. I was thirteen. His experiments cooking in the kitchen. Pigeons and windhovers, drives and the Downs, Baker Street humming with late summer, the dust of plane trees, trichomes, ten kinds of pollen.

( _You, Meredith, will be a mycologist_.)

Something sent me wild to the orchard, fractured not broken, and he followed me out, stealthy not shy.

I can see him there now in the branches, hands unwrung, targets flapping in the garden.

“What’s…” is what he said. The wind picked up in the leaves.

_The fine line of pencil there on the wrist, strand of fair hair on the sleeve, bit of a chip crumb, slit of spilt salt, the way your ankle’s turned, notebook held, some chemical equation writ large, sentiment, girlish, boyish, how like your dad…_

There were things you could hear, or see, a click in the eyes not like a hammer, or a trigger. A shutter.

“Your…friends…,” is what he said.

Bark exfoliate, tannins, pollen, sap, spores, carbon, what I’d wash from my hands later, my hair, keep there something else, held close and tucked behind.

“I don't have them, Maggie; I wouldn’t know,” he said, might have smiled a bit.

“What's dad then?”

Something ran across his expression, night animal at a crossing, that I know better now, that I know.

“I hope you find out for yourself.”

_Someday._

I wasn’t asking because I didn’t know.

“Yes I…” is what he said, lit there in the magic hour, “of course you will.”

Dad in the doorway with a dishtowel.

“Something on fire in here?”

“Shit!”

He bolted, undone sleeves flapping, leaves behind like crows scared up.

I slipped down, out, ran inside to ash and laughter.

I can see them here now in the apple trees (Pippin,Hawkridge, Forge, First and Last), blood up for sundown, on fire, autumn bearing down and all of childhood with it.

  
 _**~M** _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you WhiskeyCricket, for the inspiration.


	11. Crime

**~**

“Green fibres, synthetic,” he said to me, slammed the door.

Sulked inexplicably. Jollied dad from sleep and slipped, at seventy, back into solving, let the local jeweller hug him, pin on his scarf the tourmaline I have still.  Worn down to the café, in the kitchen, in the windows a wink of memory and murder.

*****

There are boxes. Folders and clippings. Old computers, new files. Glasses right where he left them, smudge on the left lens. Stories. Gems and elephants, candy and crowns, whips and cuffs and ash trays; murder and murder and blackmail and murder. Explosions, some averted. Flashfire.

“You were a hero.”

“I wasn’t,” is what he said, is always what he said. “I’m not. Don’t make that mistake.”

_That’s your dad; it’s always been him._

I can see him now here at the table, lines softened with evening, little puffs of London or Sussex, petrol and earth and mineral air.

It wasn’t that he ever stopped having the last word.

It wasn’t that he stopped pinning crimes to their people—or offending.

“Don’t send the postman scurrying, Sherlock…you know, if you want your packages.”

“He’s an idiot. And his brother’s a bigger one.”

“His…you’ve never met his brother!”

“I don’t need to.”

“Reminds me of that time you…oh, never mind; why do I bother?

“Yes why do you?”

“Oh for…damn it, come here.”

I’d catch them, volley and recall, bicker and sigh; later sheets lofted to the line, jumpers hung in apology, swallows flocking to their sweet rows, the bees drowsing in the Langstroths washed pink for their first case.

“That’s the one,” he said to me once, “your father showed me his hand.”

“Well,” dad said, “he did wink at me first.”

I can see him, see all of them, hands twisted in the branches, on the garden gate-- joined, parted, opened, closed; fingers on triggers and knotted, triskelion, in iron, in hair.

“Steady on Mer,” dad said,” took me shooting when I was older, never anything live, “steady on.”

_You’re going to be a sharpshooter_.

“There are things you can’t hit, of course.”

"There are things you can’t solve. But you can try.”

He said that to me once, dead-eyed the horizon, gave me his reckoning.

Sun lowering on the hives, the window box with its pinks.

In the distance something bright.

**~M**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Knots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion) for Jude.  
>  Not-live things for whiskey.  
> Reckoning for PFG.


	12. Chemistry

**~**

Magnesium. Atomic number 12.

“Happy birthday,” he said that 12 September. “Your day. Twenty-five today.”

The cake was honey, the afternoon long, their elbows bent on the scarred table. There was aunt Harry and her Clara, a black car pulled up in the drive, friends home from abroad—

Not something you forget, your best element-day, your best kiss, crime scene, the first thing you never thought you’d find.

_You, Meredith, will be a mycologist._

I’m not but I like the hunt in the dark—fungi, compounds, all the lost things, a bit of their danger. It’s what they taught me. Look here, like this. Look here. Sight it. Scent it. Find it. Write it down.

When I showed him my first for _Chemistry World_ he had to turn his face away. (“Oh, bonds,” he said, and that was pride. My heart slipped its ribs, bloomed to bursting.)

“Do you remember …”

The arsenal they shared, first case, patient, surgery, firefight, locked-room murder, book.

“… the time you shoved my gun, bulletless of course, in your waistband,”dad said, choked on his drink, “ran out in the Marylebone Road, shouting about…”

“A tattoo,” I said, “I think.”

Sherlock crinkled. “Cyclic compound with a bird inside. You drew it yourself.”

Harry’s eyes, worn as cornflower, soft with survival, her throaty laugh.

“Always had a book, didn’t you Maggie…or a bullet.”

Mycroft, bicker-edge whetted, retired, the waft of governance still strong.

Sherlock needled him over the chessboard, showed him the coralline rose, the nascent Pippin in the orchard.

When I turned six he gave us a puppy, English setter, black and white; called him Easton for the sea dog who privateered, raided, retired safe to his French villa with two million pounds.

“Never trust a gift from my brother,” Sherlock said, his face licked clean and almost to joy. “He’ll try to take it back.”

Pads sweet on my lap, soul-eyes; another great heart.

He never did.

*****

“Bonds, hmm,” dad said to me. “Toxins. Write about something romantic would you?” Poked Sherlock in the fifth rib. “And you know, stay away from crime scenes.”

“Here,” Sherlock said, his gift wrapped shining, palladium, one hand on dad’s arm. There were candles in the honeycake, my friend’s laughter, her hair knotted with garden chicory. There were crows outside, dropped pebbles, barbs, phloem, phytochelatins, inulins, cumuli, dragonflies, vagrant passerines, postboxes, farmers and foragers and solicitors and fled-from-the-city, people who might have been clients, who might still be, yellow-stiped penny buns to cook in wine sauce, all the petals, the soft breath of sheep, of horses, apples and pollen, the faint sea, green needles, the sharp scent of the young old world. Ash. A thousand kinds by then.

Twenty-five. Ashes in the garden.

_Write about something romantic._

Yes I would, I would; someday I will.

_**~MG** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Chicorium intybus chicory, blue sailors, bachelor’s button, coffeeweed, blue daisy](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/urban-jungle/pages/120612.html)   
> [ Centurea cyanus, cornflower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_cyanus)   
> [penny bun](http://www.seafordnaturalhistory.org.uk/pics/2009/Fungi04.jpg)   
> [Easton](http://www.cutepuppiesforsale.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/English-Setter-Puppies-For-Sale-1024x1024.jpg)


	13. Wind

**~**

She’s grown up in the garden, spiky and green.

Even at twelve I knew: _I can’t be like you_. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

But what to do with this place.

Its born, its beloved; its buried, its dead.

*****

“I fell in love,” dad said at eighty, “more than once. With your mother…”

He didn’t finish, slept soon after, the city dreamt, bright kitchen at our flat, Baker Street’s rain-and-acid afternoon; here on the fields the grey light of day.

“She was lovely,” he said later, “in a way you need another word for,” and Sherlock tilted his head, smiled.

_She made you._

_She saved you._

Her hand, hard on mine. _You can kill if you have to, protect your own._ It wasn’t something she really said, that any of them said, but it wasn’t as if I didn’t know.

This is what she gave me, rocked me sometimes, her face far away.

“Sherlock. Sherlock, would you…," the way she said his name sisterly, motherly, a shade of something else.

He’d look over his shoulder, hand to a rib, take my hand from hers.

It’s there, was there, in the way they spoke after dark, in the words hushed at the edges, the way they’d raise a glass, not knowing, to what they all had in them, in me.

In the eyes and the bones and the way I love, in secret, the knock at the door, unknown, the _come on_ of tumbling into a London different and not-so, never so changed that they wouldn’t know it, crime not like theirs but a shadow of it, things left to find.

What might be out there.

*****

The Christmas I was forty a wind blew in; greater than ever, greater than the gusts of childhood.

“Well,” he said, hand to the pane, “ought to tie that gate.”

“I’ll do it,” dad said.

I slept, restless, swing on its hinges, voices in dreams.

_I won’t have children, not the way you did._

_Did you ever want more or was I enough._

_So long ago. I was ten:_

“Mer,” dad at my bedroom door, “nightmare? Are you in pain?”

“Meredith,” mum, bent over the bone I was bound to break.

“Well,” Sherlock at the cast, “what have you done now?”

Here: the wind in the eaves all night, an old story banging in, demanding entry.

“When it comes for us, the wind, you’ll always know what to do,” is what he said.

“What’s that?”

“Let it carry you,” he said in the dark, tugged a blanket up, “don’t shut your eyes.”

“What’ll you do?”

“As I’ve always done.”

“You’ve always done,” is what mum said, teasing, “exactly as you please.”

Here, wind all night and I can see him, lips moving over silence; I can see them there now at the gate, all of them, wild weather courted and kept close.

The gale bangs the pane, soothes, a sentence sweet from the east.

In the garden, the deep bed.

The darkness is all right.

_**~MSMW** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [An east wind](http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/452773/Beast-from-the-east-to-bring-SNOW-freezing-winds-and-weather-chaos-to-the-UK)


	14. Cane

~

“Give me a body any day,” dad said. One foot came down heavier, his hand worked the way it would; I could almost hear it.

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means, Sherlock,” is what he said, or something like, in the tone I recognized, late nights, danger in the offing not on streets but at home. Dad’s mouth bullet-straight, a trajectory.

“Don’t say another word.”

“You heard me.”

“You know better than that, Meredith.”

I did.

*****

He was so tender about it. They both had scars. Marks. Memories in the body marked I saw; once past thirty, knew myself.

_It’s just transport._

He really knew better.

(Hands dappled with burns, faint scent that must at times have been fear, slow-sore in the muscles, bruised, beaten, whip-starved, dad’s hands turning him into bed, more than once, so many times, luna already breaking the day.)

Quiet steps, halting, away.

*****

There are stories I don’t know. But that one; that one I do.

“He left it, Sherlock said, “stopped limping like that.”

Dad wry, fond: “It wasn’t always so easy, you know, shedding things.”

All the left-behind for one more chance--

He didn’t look much of a trunk did he, a thing to lean on.

But he was, solid in the spine, book-like, fanning, branching, in the places it counted.

He was.

*****

“Get up.”

“What do you … “

“Get _up_.”

They fought sometimes, rattling round, vertiginous, an escalation.

“She was never in any danger, John.”

“I’ll be the one to decide that,” dad’s hissing whisper.

The things I couldn’t burst in on, the things I did.

(Fire, explosion, confession, secret.)

“Never be afraid to walk through a door, Maggie.”  

A smirk, adjusting a pale cuff, mirrorshine, a vanity dad laughed at, later found, well--

I think dear. I know.

Laughter that stopped, started, started again-

They’re here now in the stutter-step, the soft list towards, always, two trees over water, over ground, in the black twig-twists, apple and elm unblighted; city soot, dirt, country snow with autumn tumbling towards, hurtling, hands cuffed and clutched.

Dad’s old cane in the cupboard, rattling, bone kept to remember.

Never again needed.

_**~MS** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Safi.
> 
>  
> 
> [The elms of Sussex](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-10884905)


	15. Fruit

**~**

“When you were born,” dad said, “… no place for a baby. That's for sure.” They had their gaps, their splits, estrangements, some dad couldn’t put on paper, in the ether, in the bark, the places people carve their hearts.

“For a while we kept you away, or tried. Your mother…”

Those nets, orchard fencing, wouldn’t hold, the laws of trees being well, what they were, what they are.

Take back. Tangle. Encroach. Root.

Dad carrying me up the steps, counting them off backwards. I might have thought seventeen came first, counted the seeds that way.

When we planted things.

*****

Five apple seeds. Pippin, maybe.

“Hydrogen cyanide,” Sherlock was saying, glycosides, bitter almonds, what do you smell?

Dessert you ought not to eat, toxic marzipan; names I didn’t yet know.

He pointed.

“ _Russula emetica._ Pretty. Never eat it.”

“Unless you want to … never mind.”

I was seven. The flat was red, all the reds, blood rushed-to, scarlet, crimson, apples in bowls, calcium in flame, garnet, finch feather, lacewing, jam, _geranium sanguinium_ , _fescue rubra_ , idiochromatic cinnabar.

It was a theme.

“Anthocyanins.” Sherlock was saying, “flavonoids, pendant sugars, antho—“

Head-to-toe juice and spill, my shirt smeared with it. Sugars and salts and life, arterial.

Dad in the doorway, calm, one gasp only.

“That’s not blood. Tell me it isn’t.”

“I believe it’s cherry fool,” is what he said. Blinked slow.

“Oh my god. Sherlock you complete—“

I didn’t know what _fucking cardiac arrest_ meant.

Or yes I did, didn’t let on.

“Your face’s red because ...” hemoglobin, is what I tried to say.

Dad coughed. Sherlock bent over.

They both choked.

“Bloody…crime scene made of plants and sweets!”

“That’s the…it’s not really toxic, I promise.”

Why don’t you get some real fake blood next time?”

“Smells like burnt sugar in here and …”

“Tea?”

They snorted. Dad caught me up, cream in my hair.

*****

Years later and stone fruits, tiny crimes with their dark hearts, wry sweets; never can see them without—

Their laughter.

(They liked a cherry tart, both of them, all of them, apple cake with skins, the bit of red that meant. “Lived a fairy tale once,” Sherlock said, “apples and all.” More than once.)

I can see them there leaning in, just there at the stained table, at the mess animal and mineral, here in the orchard, in the garden; dad all dishrag and jumper, wiping my face.

Sherlock rubbing his hands; feather, peel, five seeds, all alight.

Fingers picking fruit from fool.

_**~MS** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ cherry fool](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/9420585/Cherry-fool-recipe.html)   
> [cherry tart](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10433571/Pippa-Middleton-Morello-cherry-Bakewell-tart-recipe.html)   
> [apple cake](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10387997/Mary-Berrys-very-best-apple-dessert-cake-recipe.html)   
> [red lacewing](http://www.spain4uk.co.uk/images/wildlife/butterflies/lacewing.jpg)   
> [cinnabar](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cinnabar-d6b.jpg)   
> [autumn geranium sanguineum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geraniumsangred2.jpg)   
> [russula emetica](http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/sep2004.html)


	16. City

**~**

Oh come back.

They never said goodbye to it. It said goodbye to them but they didn’t hear, Baker Street kept always, keys kindled in pockets, not a shrine but a case solved, their favorite kind.

You could smell the hearth.

Yours someday, dad said; they went there at Christmas, stalked the Marylebone Road, turned faces to the grey sky, picked mistletoe in the market, laughed and scoffed and tripped and remembered.

Strung lights here long kept, once draped over the mantel, through the orbitals of a friend.

*****

London was his first love, was theirs.

London that gloried and mourned, cast him out and took him back, embraced him, his lost, his cesspool, his cipher, his palace, his heart, blood simmering and coursing, boltholes hot with sulphur and midnight.

“Scorched my nostrils, you know, the brimstone,” dad said, smiled,“when he got … like that.”

“Like what?”

Like history ignited, the city razed Tottenham to Brixton, riots,blazes, bonfire, bombs.

“There were deals with devils, you know. Some hell involved.”

A laugh, two of them, sharp, remembering, the hiss of a candle put out.

*****

Dad brought him a steaming cup, jollied him at the scarred table, jogged the years until his eyes went bright with thirty, soft with sixty; both at once when I saw it all, the spark and the hearth, the blaze banked, kept, endothermic, what most never find, can’t contain.

“Here, look here.” His fingers flickering over the old map, marking in copper the best lots, viridian the new stops; cadmium red where the murder was.

“And this, Meredith, my best hiding place.” A twitch, his thumb spanning the Thames at Waterloo. “Nearly got myself killed there when someone, arsonist, thief, set it on fire--got out in time, packed him off to prison. He died six years later; international thief, had malaria, _falciparum_ , a new form they studied at Hospital for Tropical Diseases; I got to take a look at it, beautiful trophozoites. Mediocre thief but a good host, I suppose. Good arsonist too, clever. Your dad doesn’t know that one.”

(Well, he did.)

*****

Come back.

I can see him there at the table, light metal in water, burner cooking, dinner simmering, sundown in hand.

There was a candle in the drawer, part burnt, white wax honey on fingers; old, old. From a restaurant, dad said, we used to go to.

“Where we …”

“Yes…”

“What was it we did there?”

A wink in his voice, just there, and the thrum of London, lifeblood, Underground shaking the appleroots all the way the down; the stiff wick of his neck, just there, the old voices, the neighborhood, the way the compounds cooked down, all of them, into the familiar waft of Baker; all here, all here.

Candle on the table; hearth, home, heart, home.

The city calls us in the same language, flares and banks and blinks and dashes.

_Oh come back.  Oh stay._

**_~MS_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Candle for Safi; outside the walls for Whiskey; lights for Jude.


	17. Stars

**~**

Winter not yet risen, targets in the garden, dunlin in the fields, on the horizon the Hunter, the Bow.

“Hello,” he says, said--to me, to no-one in particular, to dad always--bent over sparklings at the table, eye-to, magnifier up.

“Iolite. Pleochroic crystal. Different colors seen from different angles. Not so valuable but rather beautiful. Have a look.”

Why did I think blue giant, blue straggler, red dwarf; colour shift and cooldown, the entire universe.

“Lovely,” is what I might have said.

“Compass,” he said, “direction of polarisation.”

“Like your father’s…” dad said later, “Sherlock’s I mean. People used to say that about the way he looked, you know because barring official document it’s difficult to say what colour his eyes were. Are.”

He’d jumped several balconies, too old for it, let dad patch him, jailed a gem smuggler, winked, looked up, looked down, looked to the horizon, all-coloured, true.

*****          

Iolite, from the Greek for violet, (([Mg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium),[Fe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron))2[Al](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium)4[Si](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon)5[O](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen)18), Io. “That’s the name of my daughter, should I ever have one,” I might have said, pissed, to a mate at school; we reeled, clung, laughed at “violet, moon of Jupiter, nymph, priestess,” future me not-to-be while I thought of them (sober) grown old, what I’d be, that old. That young.

*****

He deleted things, he always said.

“Look here,” he’s saying, “the right angle and you see things as they are.”

He grilled me on colours and causes: Chemoluminescence. Host crystal, guest impurity. No absorption of visible light, colorless. Gas excitation. The constructive interference of iridescence. Rayleigh scattering, blue sky, blue eye. Sunlight reflected; interplanetary dust and distant starlight, a memory of it unresolved, a nebulosity.

“The first time I…” dad said, _realized he knew what beauty was, in a way neither of us could say, I looked up and saw stars._

He’d told me about that one.

*****

“Oh,” Sherlock said, pointed, “look there.”

Visible-to-the-naked-eye nebula blue-violet from the core, green with forbidden transition; districts, dangerous, of red.

There at the gate the future, the past; Betelgeuse bloody at the armpit of Orion; Bellatrix blue at the shoulder; warrior, hunter, his girdle, his sword.

“Look there,” he whispers, _not really deleted_.

A wink, a radiance, the colours left behind.

 

_**~MG** _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Orion nebula](http://earthsky.org/clusters-nebulae-galaxies/orion-nebula-jewel-in-orions-sword)   
> [pleochroic iolite](http://webphysics.davidson.edu/alumni/milee/jlab/crystallography_www/physical.htm)   
> [iolite](http://gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.php?title=Iolite)


	18. Bones

**_~_ **

_The ground is no place for bones._

So he said, joint going soft in acid, glowing, the click of a beetle at its watch.

“Meredith, you know these properties, you know the world.”

“What are those?”

“Come find out.”

I did.

*****

The bones of London, of Sussex, animal and mineral, cranium and clavicle. Coralline, connective--how he loved you, city and cottage--on the inside hollow, strutted and trussed, light-heavy as the skeletons of birds.

“The heart’s got one,” dad said, took a sip in the garden, “a skeleton that is. Cardiac framework, fibrous. Leave it to Sherlock to find a way to, you know, bruise it.”

“Yes well,” Sherlock said, “there really are heartstrings too, _chordae tendineae_ ; I never found a way to tug on those, did I… oh wait, there was the one time.”

Dad choked on his drink, pinked, let the sun dapple a pushed-up sleeve. “God. Quite literally.”

They laughed through cemetery and cell, most things most thought morbid, injury and memory of, my greenstick, mum’s wrist once, (her palms smelled of yeast and lavender, faint carbon steel), fractures, fingers, far worse things. (He kept his films; dad’s too, in a file I found; they glowed indigo through their own bones, almost whole.)

*****

I can hear them there at the door, a spring wind sluicing through.

“Carbonated hydroxyapatite,” he’s saying, “alkaline phosphatase.”

Dad smacking his arm. “Inorganic parts of us. Your point?” 

“Well, collagen we share,” Sherlock said, “with the insects.”

Hands on knees in the garden, flung up between phrases while the first borage came in, eye-blue, blinked to bees thickening the hives.

“Used to have whole conversations,” Sherlock said, “with a skull.”

“He did,” dad said, “his best friend.”

“Your father was a worthy substitute.”

Hand to patella, heavy and light.

Their strength, compressive, tensile, together unbreakable.

_**~MG** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heartstrings for [Batik](http://archiveofourown.org/works/116861).  
> [Borage, starflower.](http://tcpermaculture.blogspot.com/2012/05/permaculture-plants-borage.html)


	19. Dust

**~**

“There’d be no bees without him,” is what we said, is what we liked to think.

“New pheromone,” he said, “epideictic. Royal. Sure of it.” He let me sketch enantiomers, pollen on bee-legs, delicate semiochemical trails, heat-cluster and comb. Taste it, their fire-gold honey.

On an envelope his sloped hand, loops and ticks a bee-dance themselves. Articles flagged, conferences, the time he flushed, called out a Cambridge professor while dad winced and laughed, proud, hand-over-mouth, in the back row.

_Neonicotinoid Pesticides and Queen Production_. His hands in the hives, in the garden, head ringed with swallows and petal-motes of light.

“You hadn’t lived,” dad wrote, “until you watched him work. Of course I didn’t know until I saw. He hasn’t stopped.”

Two handprints, whorls in pollen on the gate, bees humming in the balm.

“What does that tell you, Mags, what?”

_That I don’t know. That I’ll never love like that. That I don’t observe, not yet._

“Look harder,” is what he said.

I did.

*****

“Dust,” he used to say, palms rubbed _, it speaks_.  I can see him here in the shelves, crick-necked, titles unfolding, tumbling, cover-dust and page-dust, six screens open and floating in air. Mind-library, mind-hive; bee-wings and words, coded, remembered. _Long-chain alcohols. Odorant receptors. Queen substance._

What to make of this place, in a time full of bees.

Here: Things stored in wax cells. Shiny phone, old-fashioned, dad’s old stethoscope, newsprint gold with time, headlines, trowels, novels, earth in jars, old token, old coin, card, key, receipt, crown, bee-encrusted frames, honey, tea, on a scrap: _kairomones (benefit not the emitter but the recipient);_ a life, lives, twined, all of their sorrows and joys, a trail.

Scattered in the garden pollen and ash; what we grow into, to what we return.

_**~MS** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Honeycomb](http://www.solaripedia.com/13/377/5206/bee_on_honeycomb.html)
> 
> [ "Smells Like Queen Spirit" (queen pheromones!)](https://theconversation.com/smells-like-queen-spirit-royal-pheromones-in-insect-colonies-21971)


	20. Music

**~**

He was gone once before, a fermata.

I can’t say how it is that he left. Only that he hasn’t, that they haven’t. It hasn’t been so long.

He was gone once before, not really, errand among the dead. They talked about it when I was older, if I was older, the gaps he left, and what he came home to. (“I hit him,” is what dad said, “more than once.” His face flickered at that, his hand worked soft on itself.)

Sorrow transposed into bruise, is what they did.

The violin, though. There was joy.

I can see them here in the kitchen, pea-gravel crunched, the squeak of the gate, the door flung open at midnight--

"Mags!" Sherlock said, leapt up.

"Merry!" dad said.

I can see them now leaning, precarious, arms round, night and wine, the waft of spring and something much older.

"Every place we found a body," dad said, "you had to." Something about a phone, a locked room. Wind and laughter, furniture jostled, a turn round, a shuffle I might, at one time, have recognized.

"Shall I play?" is what I heard from bed.  

Voices familiar, urgent; a tug backwards and forth, what must be time doubled, tripled, doubled back, sweet chase, on itself. The quick pulse of a waltz.

“Triple murder,” Sherlock’s voice.

“Truly vicious motivator,” dad’s.

Laughter.

I'd broken my engagement not long before. ("Sock indexer; I ought to know, " Sherlock said, months earlier, not unkind, made tea.)

“Staying awhile this time?” dad said.

I did, not alone in the world, never lonely, here with the sleeping bees, lines to friends, chemicals, loves, apples picked, birds fed, triggers pulled at paper, notes to firsts and lasts--

They’re still here, world turning, sustain and stop and rest and bow.

They’re still here.

They are more than seventy, and they are laughing.

_**~MS** _


	21. Keys

**~**

“I’ve kept the hives,” the dark-haired women said, handed over the key, “thought you might want them.”

Looked at me, winked, _you’re ten, what do you know, a great deal._

A kiss, cheekboned, a handshake, something quirked and warm there, a memory; dad’s arms crossed behind his back.

“Lovely,” mum said, blinking too, “to see you again.” Sherlock smiled, pale, almost suited to sunshine.

“Better than a wedding,” is what he said.

_This place has a name._

I ran to the door, palms flat, warm wood, unschooled with summer and apples, the new-dirt scent of the garden.

“All yours,” the dark-haired woman said, beautiful, curved hip under blue silk, something in her ‘r’s. “Make it yours.” Winked at me.

Ours.

*****

In the garden, in the street, in the village: “Be careful,” mum said, white candle on the table and passing cars, scars carved, already, in the kitchen wood.

“Be home before dark,” dad said, as if they were.

“You, Meredith,” I can hear him say, “it’s always something.” ( _Write, shoot what never lived, not once, look here, look closer, rings and cells, wings and phloem, find lost things, nothing too dangerous; find them, the things I don’t say.)_

They’re still here, all of them, him most of all; their hands twined in the apple boughs, hair full of bees, ash, cutting words, murder and loves and honey and bones.

Peaceful and not, as they’d always wanted. 

*****

When I was five they took my hands, both of them, ran-sharp light, London; soft light, Sussex-into a future, this one, with the trees and the hives and the targets in the garden.

(“He was the best man,” dad said. _Mine. Ours. And that I’ve known._ )

I put the bullet in my pocket. The etched shell, my memory. Two keys, cottage and Baker. Look to the shelves, to the hives, shut the door.

I take them all with me.

I keep them with me like that.

 

_**~MSMW** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.


	22. Book

**~**

I have your friend, right here on the mantel. I have your eyes. 

A shell engraved, Mg.

Jacket, vest, little hat. Coat.

I have dad’s last book, inscribed,

_Mer—stay away from crime scenes, all right? –love, Dad_

_M--see more, always --S_

Writing hard in the end to tell apart, the loops and slopes, shapes, pressures, arrhythmias a tracery, code and clue, a way to find back.

To what they are.

*****

Grow things. Shoot things. Feed birds. Crime lingering at the edges of the city, low pressure. Bookspines. Counters wiped. Doors closed. Words.  Reactions. Decomposition.

Sussex to London like clockwork and they’re here. They’re all here.

Sherlock meets her, my new flatmate, the friend I’ve asked to stay, Isle-of-Skye fair and _two months pregnant_ , he whispers, _cat lover._   _Charmed_ , a polite hand, ghost on a day trip, dad and adventure to get back to. And bees.

He flips me a wink.

_You, Meredith._

_I see where you’re going. You see it too. Observe._

It’s always like that. It’s always like this.

“Shoot straight,” mum said, “wait for it to be right; then go.” “You know,” dad said, “all you need to.”

I can see them there in the orchard, here on the steps, at the door they knew and still, this London changed and gone on, the same, vault and underworld; still do.

_You, Meredith_ , he says. Beloved.

Spins on the sixteenth step, flips me a wink, a promise to return.

 

 


End file.
